MayCreate understandingKathy LaFollettSuccessful Companion Lifestyle2 Flock Calls
I went to bed last night with a sentence running through my head over and over. "Your parrot might hate you." I read that in an article a FlockCall member shared with me yesterday. The statement was followed by advice to accept that status of hate and get on with it as best you can. Because sometimes, parrots will hate someone. And sometimes you just have to live with a hateful bird and accept it as their decision. He based this written belief on his personal experience over a few decades shared with his birds. Which I felt bad about. Decades of assuming your bird hates you is sad.

So I fell asleep wondering why he used the word hate. Birds do not hate. Humans hate. Hate is fatal and only destroys the one that nurtures it. Biologically speaking harboring hate makes you sick. A hateful being will have elevated hormones, blood pressure and stomach acids. A hateful being will sleep poorly, eat poorly and choose poorly in their actions. A truly hateful being is so blind to real life they choose in anger and self pity. In the end a truly hateful being will spend hours defending their victim status to support and uphold the very hate they present as justified. A companion parrot harboring hate makes no sense, nor can it exist fundamentally.

A companion parrot that is aggressive in a flock is not full of hate. It is without understanding by the human in the room. There is no hate in a parrot telling you clearly to walk away. It simply needs the space you are refusing to give up. This is not rejection of company, this is a request for space. Aggressive companion parrots are in dire straights. They are full of fear and full of frustration because there is no understanding, and more vitally, unconditional acceptance of their needs. The human in the room plays judge and jury on their requests and decides a bird is bad, aggressive, mean, angry, hateful, or unreasonable. And then the door closes to create better understanding. Behavior modification exercises begin that make no sense to the parrot, but certainly gives a feeling of control to the human. Which can lead to more miscommunications. Before you know it you've lived decades with a bird you think hates you. When in reality you both stopped communicating long ago.

Pride is a cousin to hate. You need to carry a good boatload of pride to begin the process of building a hateful vessel to carry around. Parrots are a proud being, but not prideful in nature. Arrogance isn't in their DNA. They are simply, a parrot. It's hard for a human to wrap a natural instinct of pride around a companion parrot that defies the impact or pressure of that pride. Humans communicate subliminally all the time via prideful actions, objects and claims. Parrots do not.

Human nature and pride provides a drive inside all humans. The drive to have, own, acquire or get that which we do not already have, own, or have gotten. Contentment is not a human's first response naturally. A companion parrot's whole flock goal is contentment. Just to be safe, with food, materials and location inside their flock. Once a flock is strong, stable and consistently providing those things a companion parrot wants little else but same. A parrot is not watching TV or looking at advertising for a bigger cage and then glancing over to their own with dread and hateful judgement. That's what we do.

So you're wondering at this point, what's my point? I'm not talking about how to fix the parrot in question. I'm not going over steps to fix an aggressive bird. I should probably just cut to the chase! If you chose to "have a parrot" then you will not "have a companionship". You will have a misunderstood, frustrated and unyielding being in your midst.

Next time you hear someone talking about their parrot being mean or bad, ask them kindly, "Are you trying to have a parrot, or create a companionship?" Next time you find yourself at that moment of impasse with your bird (and we all have them, big or small) ask yourself, "What am I trying to do here, have a parrot, or create a companionship?"

There's a big difference in those two motivations. And there is a huge difference in the end results. But in either direction, it is the full responsibility of the human in the room.

A companion parrot that is aggressive in a flock is not full of hate. It is without understanding by the human in the room. There is no hate in a parrot telling you clearly to walk away. It simply needs the space you are refusing to give up.

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This is an important concept. So many times I have read post that say "My parrot is aggressive" The word aggressive is a word used by humans and should be directed to other humans. It is not a word to describe a parrot. (my opinion)

Merrimack-Webster defines aggression as "hostile, injurious, or destructive behavior or outlook especially when caused by frustration

Aggression is often the expression of pent-up rage," while Google defines it as "A type of behavior intending to cause physical or mental harm."

IMO, we try to sanitize word usage too much. I agree with Kathy's musings on "hate": I'm fairly certain that people ascribe it to parrots when other things are actuallygoing on. The end result may appear to be from a place of hate, but I doubt that emotion is actually "in play." HOWEVER, I can assure you that Petey IS aggressive right now. He intends to cause me harm, and I have the scars to prove it. Does he hate me? No. His hormones are driving him to pursue Daff, but I'm an obstacle. @macawpower58 , @Macawnutz , would you agree that Chaos and Sam don't hate you, but they can be aggressive?

If it walks like a duck, etc.

I love AA because of the community and the sharing culture here. I get invaluable information on training, enrichment, diet, and many other necessities to creating an environment both the people and parrots in my life enjoy. On any given day, I can find a recipe, a cool DIY project, or a sympathetic ear. AA has become an integral part of my day.
SUPER siggie by Aunt Sarah! Thanks, @Macawnutz! Ziva, May 10, 2014-December 23, 2015 Always in my heart, sweet girl.[/URL]

I'm sending this to my mom and sister. They are convinced that Java either hates or doesn't like them even though I try to explain that he's afraid and they aren't understanding his body language when he stands up straight and stiffen when they enter the room.

macawpower58Biking along the boulevardCelebirdy of the MonthMayor of the AvenueAvenue Spotlight AwardAvenue VeteranShutterbugs' Best

Same here, no hate, Chaos loves me. He'll bite the snot out of me in a second too!

I love Avian Avenue as it's my escape and my solace. It's my classroom and my podium.
It pushes me to be better and reminds me to be humble.Its my door into my other world, where I find passion, acceptance, and inspiration. A world where parrots live.​

The most severe was my white-capped pionus, Stella. I got her when she was about nine months old, and had already been through four (!!!) homes for being evil and hateful. Even after I had rehabbed her, my siblings called her 'the vampire bird', because if they even got close to her cage, she was out for blood. Yet I could bring her out of her cage, cuddle with her (sort of... pionus aren't "cuddly" the way a 'too might cuddle... but she was in her own way; she'd settle on my forearm while I was on the computer and hide her face in my elbow and let me pet and scritch her, or sit on my shoulder and 'supervise'), spend time with her, wash her, blow dry her (omg she loved the blow dryer sooooo much!) Even knowing nuances of birdy behavior, it took me weeks before she would let me touch her, months before she would come out of the cage. But her aggression was all rooted in fear, not hatred. After about two years, I was able to find her a forever home with a retired older lady who thought she was just the prettiest little bird she'd ever seen, and Stella seemed to realize it immediately. She was coming out of her cage on the lady's hand within about half an hour. <3 A little patience and love and understanding will go sooooo far with even the most 'hateful' of birds.

Which is not to say there's never any aggression of course. Stella bit me a number of times. Drew blood at least once. Add in hormonal issues, and you'll have even more of that. But it's never hateful. It's just miscommunication.

I've worked with animals my whole life and have never seen hate from any domestic or wild animal. All animals react instinctively based on their learned understanding of danger versus safety. Anything that puts them outside their comfort zone is perceived as potentially dangerous. In order to "tame" any animal it has to believe that you are not a danger but are a safe thing to them. Some individual animals and even some species are easier to get this across to than others. Spend time observing how each individual bird, horse, dog, cat, etc. reacts to stimuli from other animals, people and situations and you can tailor your approach to making them accept you as their companion. Just as we chose the individual animal as a potential companion, the animal has to choose us too or it just won't happen.